estimate the impact of obesity on medical costs in order to address the endogeneity of weight and to reduce the bias from …, which exploits genetic variation in weight as a natural experiment, yields estimates of the impact of obesity on medical … costs that are considerably higher than the correlations reported in the previous literature. For example, obesity is …

in the U.S. concurrent with the rise in obesity. The economic burden of depression, about $100 billion annually, is under …-estimated if depression has a positive causal impact on obesity. If depression plays a causal role in increasing the prevalence of … obesity, then policy interventions aimed at promoting mental health may also have the indirect benefits of promoting a healthy …